Lesson Plan: Neutrinos Physics
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to describe the properties of electron neutrinos, mu neutrinos, and tau neutrinos and their antiparticles.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- recall that in beta decay, a particle known as an electron neutrino is produced,
- recall that the electron neutrino is an electrically neutral particle,
- recall that the electron neutrino has a very small (but nonzero) mass,
- recall that the electron neutrino has two cousins: the mu neutrino and the tau neutrino, which are also neutral particles,
- recall that there is an antiparticle for each of the neutrinos: the electron antineutrino, the mu antineutrino, and the tau antineutrino,
- recall what the symbols for the three neutrinos and three antineutrinos are,
- recall that neutrinos are a kind of lepton,
- recall that the neutrinos only interact via the weak nuclear force and gravity.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- the names, properties, and symbols of the three charged leptons and three charged antileptons,
- solving nuclear equations for beta decay.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- quarks,
- bosons,
- supersymmetry,
- possible fourth neutrinos, such as the sterile neutrino,
- dark matter,
- neutrino oscillations,
- measurements of neutrino mass,
- flavor,
- the lepton number,
- the conservation of the lepton number,
- weak decay,
- Majorana particles.
